So I made my first attempts at changes today on a Priceline-issued ticket. I was ultimately unsuccessful, but I learned some things.
My situation: I have two back-to-back DAD-JFK tickets with the illegal (?) / impossible immediate turn in DAD between them. One is Priceline issued, and another Expedia issued. Both book into A on the longhaul and J on the shorthaul. Even though I plan to get a multientry visa in my passport it doesn't seem wise to attempt the turn-around, so somewhere a change needs to be made.
So, I identified what looked like suitable A inventory for some random dates in September and set out to change one of the tickets to that date.
Attempt 1 (change Expedia online): No surprises here, but website repriced for all dates that I attempted. Fail.
Attempt 2 (called Priceline): Much to my surprise, they were experience unusually high call volume today! I eventually got an agent and gave them the new dates. They too confirmed that the original booking classes were available on those dates and flight numbers. They also told me that it would be $100 change fee plus $30 phone service fee plus any fare difference. I was placed on hold again while the agent ran the numbers. They came back with very large number. I asked if they had used historic fares and they claimed that "our system doesn't let us do that." I thanked them for their time and left the ticket unchanged.
Attempt 3 (called Cathay): Ok, I knew this wasn't likely to work going in. Nevertheless, I thought it would be worth a try. Right out of the gate I told the agent that "hey, this is one of those New Years special fares" and we had a good laugh. I told them what I had been through with the OTAs and they didn't sound surprised to hear. They did offer to attempt a reprice on their system just to confirm that the inventory I was seeing was real. The A and J inventory numbers the Cathay agent had were an exact match for the ExpertFlyer results I had in front of me (despite the point-of-sale differences). She also confirmed that the fare difference should have been $36.20 for those particular flights.
Next steps: I might try to call Priceline and Expedia some more in the coming days and weeks. Worst case, I might go with the following plan:
- Fly the first segment of ticket #1 , DAD-HKG
- Upon arrival in HKG, ask CX to change the remainder of ticket #1 (HKG-JFK-HKG-DAD) to new dates, maybe layer in the year.
- Position back to DAD
- Fly ticket #2 in its entirety
- Later in the year, position to HKG and fly the rest of ticket #1
The CX agent thought that the plan above should work. She said either the transfer desk or the lounge should be able to help with the mid-trip abort/change.
One lingering question is about some reports earlier in the thread about CX referring you back to the OTA for changes if "they aren't urgent." If anyone has any sense for what might be defined as urgent, I'd love to hear.